LETTERS

News Weekly, June 30, 2018

More Mary Magdalene

For the sake of brevity, I would like to respond to three letters to the editor in the June 2, 2018, edition of News Weekly in one letter.

John Charlton says that the Gospels of Luke and John both say that, with permission of Pilate, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus came and took the body of Jesus and wrapped it in strips of linen with copious amounts of aloes and embalmed it. Sorry, Mr Charlton. Jesus’ body was not embalmed and, if you look at the Sindone (Shroud of Turin, which is one long sheet and not several pieces) you can see that he was naked.

Go some time to the museum of the shroud in Turin and see the 3D show of the burial of Jesus. From the back image, you can see his buttocks; and the front view is of a man with hands crossed over his private parts.

Further, all the Gospels write that, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other women went to the tomb of Jesus to anoint him with spices because this task could not be done on Friday because of the arrival of the Sabbath. The story of the women was an important enough part of the story of the life of Jesus to be inserted into the Gospels without it causing scandal at the time.

It is also known that the Romans were not coy about modesty and would not have been concerned about Jesus’ modesty as he hung on the cross.

Mr Charlton says that “women took no part in the activity”. That’s true, but that is not for lack of “wanting” to do the service, but because Jesus had already risen and not for the reason Mr Charlton proffers. They were on their way to anoint his body because they believed it had not been done because the Sabbath intervened and no such work could be performed during Sabbath.

David Ollerenshaw suggests that I believe that Jesus and Mary were involved “in an adulterous relationship”. Well, my understanding of adultery is that it is a liaison between two married people.

I didn’t suggest anything except that, on the first day of the week (Sunday), Mary Magdalene and other women hurried to the tomb with spices and aloes to anoint the body of Jesus. A body that was naked in death and wrapped in a cloth.

Mrs Shann’s letter is a regurgitation of her previous one, with a few additions: that is, regarding the scapegoat and Passover Lamb (which are different topics for a different time). Jesus invited the people in the room to touch him so as to allay their fears that he was a “ghost”.

Mrs Shann is selective in her reading and interpretation of Scripture.

Anne Lastman,Vermont South, Vic.

Pro-life for all human life

The late Professor of Law at the University of California, John Noonan, stated: “Once or twice in a century an issue arises so far-reaching in its consequences and so deep in its foundation that it calls on every person to take a stand.” He contended that in 19th-century America slavery assumed those proportions and that abortion is one of these issues.

Saint Teresa of Calcutta gave the following powerful message during her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize: “The greatest destroyer of peace in the world is abortion. For if a society can allow a mother to kill her own child in her own womb, how can we tell other people not to kill each other. Any society which permits abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use any violence to get what they want.”

The reality is that although the abortion issue concerns the right to life of the world’s tiniest humans, unborn babies, the decisions that society makes concerning them has grave implications for the whole family of man – for example, influencing society’s acceptance of infanticide, euthanasia and other seriously concerning life-related issues.

While arguing the case that abortion is the greatest human-rights issue of our time, it needs to be emphasised that, as all humans have equal dignity, to be truly pro-life a person needs to be concerned about all human-rights abuses, whether these are perpetrated on the unborn or on other categories of human being. Pope Francis made this very point recently in his encyclical, Gaudete et Exsultate.

Some commentators have accused anti-abortionists of being concerned only with “life in the womb” to the neglect of people suffering discrimination and injustices later in life. From my experience in fighting abortion for more than 40 years, anti-abortion activists are among the most compassionate people in society, many caring greatly about, and taking action for, not only the unborn but also the poor, refugees, the homeless and persecuted peoples in other countries.

Those who actively campaign against abortion stand out as there are so few of them. Indeed it is evident that a conspiracy of silence about the plight of the unborn has long been entrenched in our society. The hypocrisy of this societal attitude to the unborn is sickening. Consider this: if our parliamentarians legislated that 20 adolescent children could be randomly selected and killed every day in Victoria, there would be such an outcry that this legislation would be reversed in record time. Yet at least this number of unborn children is killed every day in this state.

In Australia the toll is 100,000 unborn babies killed by abortion each year.

A recent novel accusation has been made against anti-abortion activists that they regard the term “pro-life” as applying uniquely to them. This has never been the case, although this term has traditionally been used to describe anti-abortionists in the public arena.

In her article, “So, is this not pro-life?” (News Weekly, June 2, 2018), Anne Lastman pondered whether pro-lifers are sabotaging the language as surely as the pro-aborts who sabotaged the words “choice” and “rights”.

No, Anne, anti-abortionists have never “argued among themselves about words” in the context of the use of the term “pro-life”.

However, our activism does include exposing the deceitful use by pro-abortionists of euphemisms such as “pro-choice” to camouflage the deadly nature of the abortion industry.